Serhiy Lytvynenko. 1920s (?). The Ukrainian Museum in New York
Serhii Lytvynenko. 1950s (?). The Ukrainian Museum in New York
…In chamber sculpture, Lytvynenko created more than 30 works in bronze, wood, plaster, terracotta, and plasticine in the United States, marked by expressive impressionism. Especially he showed himself in portraits, depicting Ukrainian writers, artists, musicians, scientists, and cultural figures, of which he made more than sixty. He could “capture” not only their external features but also their internal psychological ones…
Ivan Kayvan, artist, art critic
Serhii Lytvynenko was a Ukrainian and American artist, a horunzhy (standard-bearer) of the UPR army, and the first chairman of the Ukrainian Artists’ Association in America.
The artist was born in 1899 in Pyryatyn, Poltava region, and graduated from the classical gymnasium in Lubny in 1917. He served in the ranks of the Ukrainian People’s Republic army as a battalion commander (1919-1920). For two years, he was in the camps for interned Ukrainian soldiers in Lancut and Wadowice (Poland). In the 1920s, he studied at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1930 he left for Paris, where he continued his artistic education.
In the same year, he returned to Lviv. At the request of Prosvita, he made four sculptural portraits: of young Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, and Hetman Ivan Mazepa. In 1933, he completed work on the tombstone of Ivan Franko, which became his most significant work. During 1941-1944, he taught sculpture at the Lviv State Art Industrial School. In 1944, he left for Germany and, in 1949, settled in the United States. In 1952, he became the head of the newly created Ukrainian Artists’ Association in America, and in 1953, he began teaching at the Ukrainian Institute of Plastic Arts. The American period of Lytvynenko’s work includes several painted portraits of famous Ukrainians, including Yevhen Malaniuk, Volodymyr Kubiyovych, Ivan Franko, and Ivan Mazepa. He died on June 20, 1964, in New York City and was buried in the South Bound Brook cemetery, New Jersey. Serhii Lytvynenko’s artwork is held in various American art collections. Many of his sculptures in Ukrainian museums were destroyed during the “Soviet purges” in the 1950s.
